It's not easy to recall all of our activities in Berlin in 1982. From the previously posted photos I see that we visited the Wall, we drove around to see some of the Cold War reminders, and we strolled along the Kufurstendamm, which was a the main drag in West Berlin's heyday. I don't remember the details of any meals or whether we ate at restaurants. I do recall taking the U-bahn. At some point we were near Checkpoint Charlie, and I posted a photo of that site in an earlier post. Did we visit any museums in West Berlin? I don't recall any.
The most memorable day during our visit to Berlin was the long day we spent in East Berlin, the area that had been designated by the East German (communist) government as being the capital city of the DDR, the East German government. At the war's end, Berlin, like Germany as a whole, had been split into four occupation zones, one each for the U.S., Great Britain, France (really!?), and the Soviet Union. Berlin was in the center of the Soviet occupation zone, and approximately a third of Berlin, that eastern third, was the Soviet zone of the capital.
By the early 1960s, the outward flow of migrants from East to West Berlin prompted East Germany, with the green light from the Soviet Union, to erect the Berlin Wall and, in effect, to completely control its population. When we visited, the Wall was only about twenty years old, but to us, sixteen and seventeen year old kids, it seemed like it had existed and would continue forever.
Checkpoint Charlie was then in the popular imagination as they way in which visitors from the west could visit East Berlin. Instead, we took the U-Bahn, the subway. Until we were getting on it, I had no idea the subway still ran between the two cities. In the first creepy moment of our day, we watched out the subway windows as we traveled through abandoned subway stops. They were abandoned, save for guards armed with long guns and companion police dogs. We had to submit paperwork to visit and exchange money. East Germany required both West Germans and other visitors to exchange Marks, the German currency at the time, 1-1, meaning you would give a West German mark and get the East German version in exchange. This was so, despite the fact that a West German mark was far more valuable than and East German one, which had essentially zero worth in world currency exchanges. If I am not mistaken, Dennis, our teacher, received permission to permit us to exchange less money than was typical. I might be wrong about that. We were required to spend whatever we exchanged, but it was difficult to find much of anything to buy there.
Here are my visas from that day:
Actually, one of these might be from our travel between East Germany and West Germany, but you get the idea.
Among the things we did that day was a visit to "Museum Island". The world-famous Pergamon Museum was located in East Berlin and has treasures from antiquity, including the Pergamon Alter from ancient Greece. I had very little idea of what I was looking at, and in fact I paid more attention to the girls in the other school groups that were visiting. I recall meeting and exchanging contact info with one East German school girl, but I lost her address before leaving Berlin. It might have been better for her, in retrospect, not to have received mail from the US, give the repressive nature of East German life.
We were taken around Berlin in a comfortable tour bus and we had East German minders/guides. At lunch time we were taken to some sort of a municipal building. I recall they gave us turtle soup, or at least what they claimed was turtle soup.
We had some free time in the large pedestrian area near the television tower, the Fernsehturm, which is still the tallest structure in Germany. We didn't visit the top, but we did have a look at their department store.
Labeled 'Centrum' in the photo, this was East Germany's multilevel department store near Alexanderplatz.
Our jaws dropped when we saw the shop that visitors from other Eastern European countries flocked to when visiting. There was very little there, plus it all looked very dated and unappealing. Consumer goods were certainly not the priority in East Germany. We 80s mall rats were aghast that people should live with such meager shopping options.
All during the day, I was bothered by both the cool weather and an inflamed upper right lip where I had a small acne mark. As the day went on I felt more tired and more bothered by the cool temps. Add to that the stark contrast of having spent a couple of days in "glamorous" West Berlin, compared to the drab surrounding on East Berlin meant I was somewhat overwhelmed at day's end.
In the evening, someone arranged for us to go to a pub that apparently served as a night club. In West Berlin we had visited the Ku Dorf, a bar and dance space (I hesitate to call it a club) and wore ourselves out with beer and dancing, probably to the amusement of our teachers. Pete Reinhardt especially "left it all on the dancefloor" that evening. I recall him drenched in sweat before we went back to our hostel to sleep. Anyway, the place in East Berlin was hardly that. I remember ordering what they considered cola and being sorely disappointed. There were very few other people there. It was depressing as hell.
At the end of a very long day we trudged back to the subway that would take us back to West Berlin to sleep before we took the train back to Mainz. It had been very hassle free to get into East Berlin, but the border agents showed their true selves as we tried to exit. They gave Peter and especially had time, for whatever reason. Farewell to a very shitty country. Here are a few more from East Berlin:
Traffic cop, East Berlin
Sitting at the fountain outside the Centrum store. From left in gray jacket and sucker (seated) Dave D., John Fredrickson, Liz ?, Mike Niemann, Barb Washa, Stacy Solderholm, Diana Fleming, Pete Reinhardt. Standing at left, Clint Miller.
Statue at Treptow park, an enormous Soviet War Memorial in East Berlin
Long view of Treptow.
